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Lord Phillip de Langdon
Lord Phillip de Langdon was one of the main characters in Biggles Sorts It Out. His report that some rubies had been stolen from his safe would eventually send Biggles and Bertie to the Kalahari Desert on their trail. When Biggles first met him with Air Commodore Raymond, all that they knew about Langdon was four lines in Who's Who--not very much for a peer of the realm whose title had been created in the sixteenth century. According to Who's Who, he was sixty-two, a widower with a daughter of sixteen and lived at Ferndale Manor in Surrey. His hobbies were travel and big game hunting and he had written one or two books on the subject. Biggles was later to discover a lot more about him and from the strangest of sources--a son he may not have known he had, Richard Browning. In his youth, Langdon had been to South Africa on a hunting trip and there he had met and married his first wife, the daughter of a mining magnate. They went to live at Ferndale in England and, according to Browning, Langdon treated his wife badly. He was "a brute and a spendthrift". After two or three years, his wife left him and returned to South Africa where she gave birth to Browning. When Langdon wanted to marry again, he asked his first wife for a divource and this was granted. He then proceeded to treat the second wife as badly as the first and she did not live long after. By the time Biggles met Langdon, he had already gone through most of his money. He had sold the farms, cut the timber and mortgaged his house. He was already beginning to sell the jewels in his safe. These jewels did not belong to him but were bequeathed to Lady Caroline Langdon, his daughter from the second marriage. It was in order to protect her inheritance that Browning had taken them from the safe, with Lady Caroline's full knowledge and agreement. When Biggles placed these facts before Langdon, he accepted that the blame for what had happened lay fairly on his shoulders. "We are what we are, and that's the sort of man I man." He accepted Biggles' suggestion to make amends and he was finally reconciled with his daughter and his son at the end of the story. Biggles observed that Langdon was the kind of man who would have been a striking fiugre anywhere in society. In meeting Langdon, he had half expected an unusual type but nothing quite as outstanding. Langdon was no less than six and a half feet tall with shoulders in proportion and had a figure as straight and lean as an athlete. He did not look his age--the only indication of this was a few grey hairs in a bristling black beard. His hair was thick and rather long. His skin stretched tightly over his bones and had a parchment like quality. His face was dominated by a nose shaped like a bird of prey, with thick bushy eyebrows which overhung dark eyes which had a disconcerting glint in them. Biggles surmised that whatever else he might be, Langdon was not a man to be trifled with. He seemed to ooze energy, power and inflexibility of purpose. He would, Biggles felt, dominated any company. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:Air Police era characters